Possible to crowd source new textures and items?

[ShardWarrior]

As the title suggests - is crowd sourcing textures and such for bases something that can be done?  Would still have to have someone on the HC team review/approve and add to the game.

 

Just a thought.

[Dynamistress]

Seconded!

[Ulysses Dare]

The issue, I imagine, would be twofold:

1) You have to get all of your volunteers to use software that can be rendered by CoH's server code. Given how notoriously balky that code is, I'm not sure there's an off-the-shelf solution that would be usable.

2) You'd have to quarantine and scan all user submissions for malicious code. I have no idea how resource intensive that would be. Past a certain point though, crowd sourcing might just prove more troublesome than helpful.

[justicebeliever]

The issue, I imagine, would be twofold:

1) You have to get all of your volunteers to use software that can be rendered by CoH's server code. Given how notoriously balky that code is, I'm not sure there's an off-the-shelf solution that would be usable.

2) You'd have to quarantine and scan all user submissions for malicious code. I have no idea how resource intensive that would be. Past a certain point though, crowd sourcing might just prove more troublesome than helpful.

 

Better to have textured and lost, than to have never textured at all...

 

It’s possible those are problems...but we should find out before assuming that.  There needs to be some sort of change control, regardless, but I'm hopeful more and more of this becomes crowd sourced...

[EggKookoo]

Seconded!

 

Second seconded!

 

The issue, I imagine, would be twofold:

1) You have to get all of your volunteers to use software that can be rendered by CoH's server code. Given how notoriously balky that code is, I'm not sure there's an off-the-shelf solution that would be usable.

2) You'd have to quarantine and scan all user submissions for malicious code. I have no idea how resource intensive that would be. Past a certain point though, crowd sourcing might just prove more troublesome than helpful.

 

For 1, there's no need for all volunteers to use any particular software, just software that can output whatever basic file format CoH uses (JPG? TGA?). The HC devs just need to provide the specs, or even sample textures. For 2, it's not easy to embed malicious code into an image file. It's fairly easy to pull out the pure pixel information. Heck, I do that all the time with images people upload to web sites I produce for work. You can certainly encrypt data into the byte sequence (Al Qaeda was suspected of communicating this way) but that's not the same thing.

[ShardWarrior]

The issue, I imagine, would be twofold:

1) You have to get all of your volunteers to use software that can be rendered by CoH's server code. Given how notoriously balky that code is, I'm not sure there's an off-the-shelf solution that would be usable.

2) You'd have to quarantine and scan all user submissions for malicious code. I have no idea how resource intensive that would be. Past a certain point though, crowd sourcing might just prove more troublesome than helpful.

 

Yeah, not seeing either of those to be an issue to be honest.  All that would be required is providing the users with image file format (.jpg, .png etc), file size, pixel dimensions and have them posted here.  Someone from the HC team can pull ones they find appropriate and convert them for in game use.

 

As others have mentioned above - no simple task to embed malicious code into an image file.

[klokwerkaos]

There is already a section for volunteers for art assets

[PeterDutcher]

Seconded!

 

Second seconded!

 

The issue, I imagine, would be twofold:

1) You have to get all of your volunteers to use software that can be rendered by CoH's server code. Given how notoriously balky that code is, I'm not sure there's an off-the-shelf solution that would be usable.

2) You'd have to quarantine and scan all user submissions for malicious code. I have no idea how resource intensive that would be. Past a certain point though, crowd sourcing might just prove more troublesome than helpful.

 

For 1, there's no need for all volunteers to use any particular software, just software that can output whatever basic file format CoH uses (JPG? TGA?). The HC devs just need to provide the specs, or even sample textures. For 2, it's not easy to embed malicious code into an image file. It's fairly easy to pull out the pure pixel information. Heck, I do that all the time with images people upload to web sites I produce for work. You can certainly encrypt data into the byte sequence (Al Qaeda was suspected of communicating this way) but that's not the same thing.

 

I agree...but it is more difficult than that. Items are rendered in true 3D, so you would need 3D Studio or something like it. It isn't JPG or TGA.

[EggKookoo]

I agree...but it is more difficult than that. Items are rendered in true 3D, so you would need 3D Studio or something like it. It isn't JPG or TGA.

 

Unless CoH's engine is really, really weird, it is almost certainly just UV mapping 2D textures to 3D objects. You should be able to make variations on those same textures, and if you don't change any scaling or sizing, they would map to the same geometry.

[klokwerkaos]

I'll say it again, there is already a volunteer thread for art assets.  If you want to volunteer to make art assets, go there.

[EggKookoo]

Man, if only there was an existing thread for volunteering to make art assets. Then we'd be all set!

[klokwerkaos]

Man, if only there was an existing thread for volunteering to make art assets. Then we'd be all set!

 

 

!

[Display Name]

What is the link to the existing thread for volunteering to make art assets?

[EmmySky]

Anyone happen to know the names of the files or which folder they may be in my CoH folder?  I will have a peek tomorrow and see if I can do client side mods on my base.  For everyone in your supergroup to see it itd have to be in the game or everyone have client side mods.  People use client side mods for power buttons and even vidiotmaps is a mod, so it should be doable strictly from a client side perspective.

Edited November 26, 2019 by EmmySky

[Guardia]

The art and geometry assets for CoH are compressed into PIGG files. You need an unpacking program to extract from those, and there are a few out there.

 

 

[Enabling Shenanigans]

The location of the thread for art asset volunteering still isn't in here? 

 

It really shouldn't have taken me so long to find the silly thing, but then that's what happens when the details on said thread were less than complete.  It's in the Developer's Corner.